Last night I attended the talk given by Patrick Crozier about the First World War, that I flagged up here. Very good. And very well received by a quite large gathering.

Key dates:

1890 Kaiser rips up, for no good reason, the treaty Germany has with Russia. The treaty said, if Russia attacks Austria, Germany sides with Austria. If Austria attacks Russia, Germany sides with Russia. But after 1890 Germany doesn’t ever side with Russia. This not unnaturally stirs it up with the Russians.

1905 Germany starts to build a fleet. This stirs it up with the Brits. Some Brits said build six dreadnoughts. Others say build two dreadnoughts. They compromise by building eight dreadnoughts. (That was apparently a Winston Churchill quip.)

None of Germany, France or Britain behaved very sensibly. Anyone wanting to stop the madness would have had a hard job knowing who to talk to, at the top of any of the three governments. In discussion, Christian moaned about the French obsession with Alsace and Lorraine, and Philip Chaston moaned about how Lord Grey dragged us Brits into it, in secret.

As I said in my earlier posting re World War One, too many thought it would be a quick replay of the Franco-Prussian War. Not enough realised that the American Civil war, longer and more destructive, was a better guide.

But, Haig, Kitchener and Von Moltke did see a long and destructive war as likely. But they went ahead anyway.

Plus the public got a good kicking, for celebrating when war was declared, stirred up by national newspapers.

By the way, Von Moltke said that once mobilisation started it couldn’t be stopped, because of the train timetables. But, this was a lie.

Christian said he now understood why Patrick was so keen on (a) WW1 and (b) railways. Obvious, when you think about it.